Ethical perspectives in Latin America’s journalism community: A comparative analysis of acceptance of controversial practice for investigative reporting

Abstract

Latin Americans are living in an unprecedented era of democracy while experiencing a spike in investigative journalism production. Investigative journalism holds its own conundrums of ethical decision-making related to techniques used and consequences of its content. This study analyzes ethical interpretations in the region’s investigative journalism community through a comparative analysis based on a survey conducted with journalists, journalism educators, and students from 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Our findings highlight the prevalence of a deontological perspective to ethics, with the majority of the respondents rejecting the use of soft-lies as investigative techniques. The study found, however, variability in ethical perspective within Latin America and Caribbean’s geo-cultural regions, with Central America and the Caribbean region leading in opposition and Brazil and the Southern Cone indicating more lenience toward controversial practices. When it comes to source-related controversial techniques, the journalism community in the region overwhelmingly rejects such practices.